


Brotherhood

by haillenarte



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Semi-Canonical Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:51:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haillenarte/pseuds/haillenarte
Summary: Written in four hours; set after patch 4.1. Fordola makes three friends and a lifetime of mistakes.





	Brotherhood

**ansfrid.**  
  
  
By the time she is eleven, Fordola cannot remember her father's face. Not clearly; not  _distinctly_. She remembers him as sensations — the smooth planes of his face, his coarse blond hair, and the scratchy pinpricks of his stubble when he held her to his chin — but she cannot remember him visually. She is incapable of reconstructing his face in her mind.  
  
This is why she does not trust concepts. In the years to follow, she learns to rely on tangibles.  
  
Fordola does not recall her father's face, but she recalls the face of the man who killed her father. Or, at least, she  _thinks_ she knows the man who killed her father. She cannot be absolutely sure. In the chaos and confusion of her father's stoning — the subsequent rush to get him to a physician's office, only to be told it was too late, that he was gone — she did not see the man who threw the heaviest rock. Instead, Fordola remembers the murderer's laugh, the ugly snort-guffaw of the man who had laughed the loudest when her father keeled over and fell in the dirt. When her mother sends her out to buy food and water with their paltry pouches of thrice-tithed gil, Fordola listens to men talking on the street, and tries to match the laughter she hears with the ugly laughter in her memories.  
  
The man she eventually suspects of being her father's killer is a known drunkard. Fordola thinks very little of him, as do most people.  The murderer spends his days holding his tongue around the imperials so that he can take his anger out on his wife when he gets home. He has never done a day of honest work in his life. It is, therefore, easy for Fordola to swear to herself, very reasonably, that when she is older, she will kill him.  
  
To Fordola, her father is not an individual, but a memory to be honored, and she honors him long after her mother has stopped mourning. She remembers her father with every step she takes, every breath of dry saltland air in her lungs.  
  
Her adolescent years are spent plotting revenge.  
  
Ansfrid is the one who takes that from her.  
  
It happens quite without warning, without prelude or preamble. One day, as she is walking the streets, she spies the local drunkard walking out of a tavern with a boy at his side. Not quite her age — a little older, fifteen or sixteen perhaps — but the sight is strange enough to give her pause. She has spent years secretly keeping tabs on her father's killer; she was not aware he had a son.   
  
Strange. Very strange.  
  
Curiosity spurs her to follow the pair into a deserted alley, where — quite without warning — the boy plunges a knife into the man's gut. Then, when the man falls to his knees, the boy cuts his throat too, just for good measure.  
  
Fordola doesn't know if the cry that leaps to her throat is one of shock, or joy, or rage.  
  
She isn't  _horrified_ — it isn't uncommon for street urchins to turn to banditry and murder nowadays, and the Garlean soldiers don't exactly care enough to stop it — but she stays rooted in one spot, staring. The boy cuts the man's purse-strings, then wipes his blade on the man's pants; whistling, he turns to the entrance of the alleyway, and finally locks eyes with Fordola.  
  
They are dead silent for some time.  
  
The boy is the first to speak. "Someone you knew?" he asks, infuriatingly casual, with a curt nod to the slain drunkard's body.  
  
"No," Fordola replies, unsure of how to even begin to explain the situation. "I was going to kill him."  
  
"Oh," the boy says. He does not even question this statement, yet has the grace to at least look sheepish. "Sorry about that."  
  
They are silent for another moment, the girl who planned to kill the man and the boy who killed him without a plan, and in a darkly humorous sort of way, Fordola almost finds the situation funny. She sizes up the boy. She is thirteen, her face still fat with childish innocence, but she has an uncommonly sturdy frame for her age, and she thinks she could take him in a fight, if it came down to it. By contrast, the boy is dark-haired, rather slender, and really very handsome, by Ala Mhigan standards. Vaguely, she suspects that she knows what he must have said to lure the drunkard into the alleyway, but it wouldn't be polite to mention it, and it's not important, anyway.  
  
"Here," the boy says suddenly, in a reconciliatory tone, "How about we pretend you did it, and call it even?"  
  
Fordola has recollected enough of her nerves to tease him. She folds her arms, frowning. "I don't think that'll be enough," she says.  
  
The boy is good-natured, in a strange way; he smiles and shakes his head, beckons her over. "Oh, come now," he says, cajoling. "Don't be like that. I'll give you my knife, and you can stab him wherever you'd like."  
  
Fordola demurs, doesn't want to _call it even_ — which, the boy correctly surmises, is an attitude born more of shyness and uncertainty than anything else. He approaches her with impressive ease, as though he has decided that she is the little sister he has always wanted; he presses the dagger into her palm. His hand is gentle upon her shoulder as he guides her hands.  
  
"It's almost the same," he says. "I promise."  
  
The boy's name is Ansfrid, and he makes his living in exactly the way that Fordola suspects — this is not his first time killing someone, and it will not be the last. Somehow, he is kinder than she deserves. Kinder, really, than anyone in his position should be.  
  
(Privately, she knows that it is his death she regrets the most.)  
  
  
  
**hrudolf.**  
  
  
What surprises Fordola when they first begin training to join the Garlean military is that Hrudolf fights nothing like Ansfrid.  
  
In some ways, Ansfrid never grew out of being a pickpocket. His years on the street gave him a speed and confidence that few other swordsmen can match; as an opponent, he likes to strike quickly and stay on the aggressive. Plus, despite the fact that Ansfrid was once slender and slight, time has made him broader and taller than he used to be, giving him the advantage of strength and reach.  
  
Hrudolf is even more well-built than Ansfrid, and if Fordola were him, she would fight the way Ansfrid does — hard and fast, leaving the opponent little time to breathe. But Hrudolf prefers a more cautious approach. He waits for his enemy to strike first; he likes to parry their blows. His movements are patient and careful. When at last he spots an opening, he takes it.  
  
Hrudolf's strategies are simple. They work almost every time.  
  
Meanwhile, Fordola is a woman — she is cursed with a smaller build and a shorter reach. She has heard some men argue that women are more agile fighters, but this, she quickly learns, is a lie, for Ansfrid can dance circles around her ere she even has time to draw her blade.  
  
She learns to work around her shortcomings.  
  
In another life, Hrudolf might have been their leader. He is calm and collected enough for it; he is a boulder in a storm. But when she asks him if he thinks she should be less quick to take the initiative — if he thinks, in other words, that she is being too demanding, too controlling, too  _bossy_ — he shakes his head.  
  
"You've got enough passion for all of us, Fordola," Hrudolf explains. "You bring us strength."  
  
That's what he tells her, at least, and Fordola isn't entirely certain that she believes it. But she has to. She must.  
  
(Ansfrid, Hrudolf, Emelin; she chants their names like a mantra, a prayer that will bring her salvation. Fordola is not religious — she worships no gods, no eikons — so when she must believe in something, she believes in friendship. In bonds of brotherhood. She believes that families are forged, not born; that loyalty lies not with concepts but with people.  
  
She thinks that they believed in her, too.)  
  
"Keep calm, Fordola," Hrudolf likes to say. "You anchor us all."  
  
  
  
**emelin.**  
  
  
The thing about Emelin, Fordola decides, is that she is a good woman, except when she is not. Ansfrid and Hrudolf are good men and good friends, but neither of them are  _shrewd_ , the way Emelin is. In another life, Emelin might have been a scholar. She has a tactician's heart, a knack for creativity and innovation in battle.  
  
The problem is this: of all the Skulls, it is Emelin who has the most potential for true savagery.   
  
The men never expect this of her. Most of the Skulls merely do their part to keep the Ala Mhigans cowed — a few of them are simply bullies who enjoy beating and brutalizing others — but Emelin is the worst and best of all. Fordola has seen Emelin throw full-grown men into the wall and giggle at the sound of cracking bone; she has seen Emelin beat men within an inch of their lives while laughing, telling them to scream more.   
  
Most of the time — because Fordola tries to keep her allies close at hand — she will step in and tell Emelin to stand down before she kills someone.   
  
Other times, Fordola isn't around to stop her.  
  
One day, she calls Emelin to her office, speaks with her as equals, in a hushed whisper. "Emelin," Fordola says, "You know we began this journey together. We swore we would do anything it took to earn our freedom. But this... this needless abuse of the Ala Mhigans —"  
  
Emelin laughs in her face, pats Fordola's cheek, as she has every right to; she is an old friend, after all. "Lighten up,  _Commander_ ," she teases, as if all this has been in jest. "Look at where we've gotten you! The Ala Mhigans may call the Skulls cruel, but Lord Zenos relies on us near as much as the Garlean conscripts. We are almost free, my dearest Fordola. I can  _taste_ it."  
  
"Emelin, please." Fordola takes Emelin's hand from her face, grips it in her own — as a friend, as someone who  _cares_. "Be serious."  
  
"I  _am_ serious," Emelin counters. She squeezes Fordola's hand in return. "Are we not sisters-in-arms? All we do is for freedom. I swear it."  
  
The mention of sisters stirs memories Fordola can only barely recall. She closes her eyes, tries to concentrate. "You had a trueborn sister once, Emelin," she says, suddenly, on instinct. "A blood sister. What happened to her?"  
  
The topic of her dead sister does not surprise Emelin, but then again, nothing does, these days. She smiles at Fordola, in her half-innocent, half-mad way; she rolls her eyes, exasperated. "That was a long time ago," Emelin says. "I've told you this before. She was a beautiful girl — and you  _know_ what happens to beautiful girls in Ala Mhigo."  
  
Emelin is quite beautiful, herself, but Fordola has the good sense not to mention this, in case she tears open old wounds. "You've never told me the whole story," Fordola says, cautiously.  
  
Emelin stops to consider it; her painted lips frown. "I suppose not," she says, slowly. "But it's nothing new. And so depressing! You've heard similar stories before, I'm sure." She sighs, shakes her head. "My sister — she was older than me. More like a mother. She knew no trades, so she made little trinkets to make ends meet. Bracelets made of hemp and crude beads, that sort of thing. Of course, few people had money for such things, but now and then, someone would buy  _something_. Out of pity, you understand."  
  
At last, Emelin disentangles her hand from Fordola's. "One day, a group of Ala Mhigan men approached her — said they'd give her money if she made them something special. Even I would have known what they  _really_  wanted, if I'd been there — but she was naive, and she went with them. Stupid girl."  
  
"The funny thing is that she didn't seem all that different, afterward," the woman continues, a faraway look in her eyes. "Not at first. When she finally came home, she told me what happened to her in the blandest tone of voice. Like it was nothing at all. And I thought — I thought it would be fine. I thought she was fine. I thought... I don't know. I was wrong."   
  
She pauses. She looks at her boots: Garlean-issue. "She threw herself off the wall two moons later," Emelin says, finally. "I'm sure you can guess why."  
  
Fordola is lucky. She is not and has never been beautiful. It has spared her the fate of women like Emelin's sister. When men want to conquer Fordola, it is because they hate her, or else fear her. Being  _desired_ is an entirely different and unpleasant thing.   
  
Eventually, she dismisses Emelin from her chambers.   
  
The next day, when they are out on patrol, Fordola does not intervene when Emelin plants her boot on a man's back, and neatly breaks his arms for fun.  
  
Emelin laughs — she always does. She is a Skull above all else, above other labels of allegiance like  _Garlean_ or  _Ala Mhigan_. "It's so much better when they tell you how much it hurts," Emelin announces, breathlessly exhilarated, a wild look in her eyes — and when Fordola hears this, she clenches her fists tight against her palms, and says nothing.  
  
  
  
**zenos.**  
  
  
What Fordola has not told anyone — indeed, what Fordola will  _never_ tell anyone, unless the damnable Echo betrays her, somehow — is that her first vision was of Lord Zenos's heart. She did not see his mind or his memories — her visions are rarely so crisp, so clear — but she remembers him in flashes of feeling, heady and all-encompassing. She remembers waking nearly naked on the examination table following the resonance procedure, seeing his face — a rush of pain in her head, and then —  
  
And then emptiness. Deep and pure, like the bottom of the ocean; an emptiness dark enough to drown her soul.  
  
She knows what people say about her. Her Garlean subordinates liked to whisper behind her back about the ways in which she must have  _physically persuaded_  Lord Zenos to give her rank — less because the rumors had root in fact and more because the soldiers themselves wanted to imagine their savage superior on her knees. The Ala Mhigans, too, call Fordola a bitch in heat, a traitor who spread her legs and bathed Zenos's plated sollerets with her tongue, mostly because it is hard to call a woman "the Butcher" and easier to call her a whore.  
  
But her relationship with Zenos had nothing to do with intimacy — with sex or satisfaction or love. Lord Zenos was the sun in a year of drought. He was dangerous and glorious and strangely beautiful; he was a cruel god to be worshipped. And for a time, Fordola truly believed that Zenos yae Galvus was infallible, that his favor would win her freedom.   
  
Like all Garleans, he thought of her as naught more than a savage, and in his presence, she felt like one.  
  
But Zenos was not someone she could love. He was never someone for  _anyone_ to love.  
  
In her cell, Fordola contemplates time. In the fleeting moments when her mind is silent, she measures the time in heartbeats, equates one second to each pulse. She counts the time between the seconds; she feels her heart slide slowly out of rhythm with the count. She thinks of the exhilaration of battle, of blue eyes ringed by heavy lashes, of her racing heart. Of Doman longswords in the pouring rain. And it is then that Fordola finally realizes that they were right all along — that she did love Zenos after all, but only in the way that captive beasts love their cages: for familiarity if nothing else.  
  
  
  
**arenvald.**  
  
  
The half-Garlean boy — Arenvald — keeps visiting her cell, and he frustrates her because he seems to grow more and more persistent with every passing day. He tries to  _talk_ to her. He likes to claim that he understands her, that he sees what she was trying to do — but this is a lie, and they both know it. 

He would never do what she did. His heart is softer than hers.

Fordola doesn't know why he's wasting his time.

She half-suspects that the boy is in love with her — less as a woman and more as an ethical dilemma — but, really, it doesn't matter whether he is or he isn't. Either way, trusting Arenvald would be a mistake. Fordola knows what boys are like when they fancy themselves heroes. He will care for her only so long as she is a problem to be solved. The moment he understands her, or she concedes that he is right, he will lose all interest in her, and find someone else to save.

What Fordola  _will_ admit, however, is that Arenvald makes for better company than the full-blooded Ala Mhigan guardsmen, and she prefers him to the Resistance bastards, in all honesty. For one thing, Arenvald does not loudly describe what he would do with her if only he were given permission. For another, her hyperresonance is constantly buzzing in the back of her skull, and it is easy to drown in Arenvald's memories because she knows that she had nothing to do with them.

Whenever he stops by her cell, she breathes deep of his heart. Now and then, she supposes, he peeks into hers.

He's at it again one day — trying to be  _nice_ , asking her if she's eaten, as though he is somehow responsible for the stale crusts and tepid water that they give her — when her head flares with pain and she catches a glimpse of some memories tinged with more sorrow than usual:  _a rugged Miqo'te man, smiling; an Elezen woman with a lance; the Miqo'te leaning up to pat Arenvald on the shoulder while the Elezen made jabs at his height; a graveyard in Thanalan_ — then, nothing save regret, sharp and overwhelming.

They died to protect Arenvald from Garlean soldiers. Fordola knows this. She  _knows_.

_Wars are won on the backs of the dead,_  Fordola reminds herself.  _There is no truth but this._

When she rubs her fingers against her temple, then pinches the bridge of her nose, Arenvald immediately recognizes the symptoms of what must surely be resonance-related pain. "What did you see this time?" he asks quietly, resigned to his fate. He knows that, in staying, he has consented to letting her into his past.

For a moment, Fordola wonders what Arenvald's Echo has told him of her life. She wonders if he has ever seen her father, the one whose face she cannot remember. It's a funny thing, the way memories work. Her own memories are rusty and aged; they are hazy when she reaches for them. And yet, whatever Arenvald has seen through the Echo would have been crystal-clear.

If Arenvald has seen her father in the depths of her heart, then he knows him better than she does.

"A'aba Tia seemed like a good man," Fordola murmurs — and she says the man's name to hurt Arenvald more than anything else.

Sure enough, the boy flinches. Perhaps he has not thought of A'aba Tia in a long time — that man who was at once an older brother and father to him. But he does not lash out in anger, the way she expects; he does not tell her that she should not defile the man's name. He lowers his eyes. "He was a good man," Arenvald answers, after a pause.

Fordola closes her eyes. She leans her head against the wall of her cell, and thinks of laughter: Ansfrid's roguish smirks; Hrudolf's quiet chuckles; Emelin's cackling, wild and hysterical. She tries to lock them in her heart, but they slip as if through her fingers — so she reminds herself that everything is her fault. That she killed them. That they are gone because they swore to her that they would die for her freedom.

"Hold fast to his memory," she says, to herself and to the world. "One day, it will fade."


End file.
